He was pitted against Tiger closer Juan Acevedo with two outs in the ninth inning and the potential tying run on second after Alfonso Soriano and Derek Jeter couldn’t drive home pinch runner Enrique Wilson. Giambi worked the count full and had the Yankee Stadium crowd on its feet anticipating late-game magic.

“You have to live for those moments,” Giambi said of his white-knuckle at-bat against the right-handed journeyman. “It’s a chance to tie the game. We had three shots. Today he won.”

Acevedo saved a 2-1 Tiger win in front of 40,541 when Giambi’s foul tip on a sinker at the knees stuck in catcher Brandon Inge’s glove.

“At 3-1 he made a good pitch,” said Giambi, who walked in the first and third innings and was hit in the seventh. “At 3-2 I fouled a pitch into [Inge’s] glove. Everything was down, he didn’t make a mistake.”

Neither did Mike Mussina, who absorbed the tough-luck loss despite allowing one hit – an Eric Munson upper-deck homer in the second – through six innings. From Munson’s homer until Damion Easley opened the seventh with a single, Mussina retired 13 straight.

“I will give up solo homers all year; we couldn’t get anything across the plate,” said Mussina, who dropped to 16-9 with his second straight defeat.

The loss stopped a four-game winning streak for the Yankees, whose lead in the AL East fell to 8½ over the Red Sox. The Yanks contributed to the loss by going 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position.

Munson’s homer staked Brian Powell to a 1-0 lead that vanished in the fourth when Soriano singled in Raul Mondesi from second. But after averaging 6.3 runs in Mussina’s 28 starts, that was all the run support he was going to get.

Chris Truby singled with one out in the eighth for Detroit. Posada’s low pick-off throw to first got away and allowed Truby to reach second. Behind, 3-1, to Omar Infante, who was making his major league debut, Mussina challenged him with a fastball on the outer half of the plate. Infante served the ball to center for an RBI single.

Still, the Yankees had two innings left to inflict damage on a suspect Tiger pen. But Oscar Henriquez worked a scoreless eighth. That brought the game to the ninth and Acevedo, a 32-year-old right-hander who was pitching for his sixth big league team.

Pinch-hitter John Vander Wal, who hadn’t batted since Sept. 1, ripped Acevedo’s first pitch into the left-field corner for a double. Wilson ran for him and was on the alert for a sacrifice bunt by Soriano, who took the first pitch and fouled the second one.

“I didn’t want to limit him to one swing,” Joe Torre said about taking the bunt off after the foul. “I wanted him to get two swings.”

Soriano got one and hit a routine grounder to third that didn’t advance Wilson and accounted for the first out.

“I was trying to hit the ball to second base or right field but they threw inside,” said Soriano, who went 3-for-5 and swiped his 40th base after a third-inning single.

Jeter was up next and he crawled out of a 0-2 hole to run the count full before lofting a stress-free fly to right. That brought up Giambi, a .358 (48-for-134) hitter with runners in scoring position, to the plate. At 3-1 Giambi took a strike and then sent the crowd home on a downer.